Luigi Pirandello
L'uomo solo

What is life?

The mystery of mysteries for us humans, who live here and now. Of course, if we had with us, here, a telescope, a telescope that didn’t show what the planets and stars far from us are like, but a telescope that... as if reversed, showed us the Earth so tiny, from afar, seen from one of those planets: we would not concern ourselves with this philosophy.

But we don't have it.

Therefore, like it or not, we have to deal with it, with this life.

A trap, some say, a sentence. We are all born condemned to death. So, how can one have the courage to be a parent, to give someone else this sentence of condemnation? What are we, supreme judges?

A man made such reflections in his confessions contained in an open letter. Already in the middle of his life’s journey, he lived with his father who occupied the opposite room. His cruel judge had been living, for seven years now, immobilized in his bed. He ate and cried, cried and ate. Ate, so to speak, he was fed by two maidservants, while the man, the son, in the living room, toyed with the thoughts in his mind.

He thought, “what stupid, miserable, and unconscious creatures all females are! They adorn themselves, line themselves, turn their smiling eyes here and there, show off as much as they can their provocative forms; and they don’t think they are in the trap too, also destined for death, and that they have the trap within them, for those who will come.”

Misogynist. And he probably raved. However, this man knew mythology, and the terrible, perverse inescapable penances with which the gods used to punish those who dared to confront them. And how much nihilism, in his life philosophy.

He was timid, in fact, according to common sense, because he had chosen not to put anyone in the trap, not to condemn anyone.

Except that a few months before... life had played a dirty trick on him. He raved, then.

She was beautiful and shy, that married woman, but without children. In the darkness of the night, which the man used to contemplate, she would come out of his father's room, whom she was caring for. The light could not pierce the darkness, so a scream in the living room accompanied the clash of the two bodies. The woman placed the man and the man placed the woman into a state of incandescence.

Now, after a few months, a new condemned to life, a condemned because of him, is about to be born in Sardinia, where the woman and her husband have moved. However, our man confesses and swears that he didn’t think things would go this way, he thought she couldn’t have children. It was the husband, instead, and he is sure the woman suspected it. He accuses her of being a judge, in his opinion, of that new sentence she carries in her womb and thinks of going to the island to save the condemned, by killing the mother, or to kill himself along with the seventy-six-year-old man who many years before had decreed his own sentence.

And so ends the story and we, leaving the man to his thoughts, prepare to read many other extraordinary cases that happen on our small planet.

Reminder:

Read the tales for a year, a Nobel Prize writing workshop, and nourishment for our reader's soul.

Effects:

Expansion of the spectrum of known characters: beings more alive than those who breathe, eat, and sleep; perhaps less real, but more true than those.

Dosage:

At least two short stories a week.

Warnings-side effects:

An overdose could cause side effects to your mental balance.